May 8, 1997
'The Little Engine that Could' meets 'Our Town'
ROBERT MOHL
News Editor
HALIFAX - It's buried. It's old. And owner L.H. White has no idea how it got
there.
"It's an old single-piston engine, I guess. That's what everybody keeps
telling me," says White, 63.
Over the past few days, a community excavation project has been under way.
Located in a vacant lot across from the Halifax Post Office, the dig has been
attracting visitors to look at the antique engine and trade wisecracks.
"All the folks in town got interested," White says. "Every time you come out
here a crowd will come up."
"It's the most exciting thing we've had in Halifax," says one visitor, Doug
Phillips, 56. "But then not much happens in Halifax."
White bought the lot three weeks ago. Last Friday he noticed a piece of white
metal sticking up from the grass.
"Somebody painted it so they wouldn't hit it with the lawn mower," says
White who began digging out of curiosity.
He kept digging.
At first he thought it was a sewage line, but town officials said no. While
they were there they tried to haul it out with a truck, but it wouldn't budge.
So he kept digging.
"I've spent more time at it, but (his son) Joey got more dirt out of it,"
White says.
Besides the engine, White has found a fork, plates, bricks and mysterious
concrete disks.
"This is the best thing I found," says White, holding up an old glass bottle
labeled 'Tryme.' It's a soft drink bottled in Richmond, Va. On the bottom is a
patent date - April 24, 1924.
"She's been down there a long time," White says.
He also found a bottle labeled 'Maypop,' but it broke during digging. Fearful
of damaging any other treasures, the rest of the work has been done with a
garden trowel.
Orange safety cones, donated by the town, mark off the three foot deep hole.
At the bottom, is a mysterious red-brown, desk-sized artifact, adorned with
wheels, gears and springs.
"It looks like a little train, upside down," White says. For a while he
thought he might have found a buried locomotive.
No luck.
Con Proctor, 71, a retired mechanical engineer and Halifax town
councilman, says it's a single-cylinder motor.
Called "pop-pop" engines for their distinctive sound, they were used in saw
mills, ice houses and cotton gins. Replaced by multi-cylinder engines, they
were used from 1890 up to the 1950s, Proctor says.
Working models can be found at the 4-H Museum outside of Halifax.
"My guess is this goes in a cotton gin or saw mill," Proctor says. "It could
have come from the cotton gin on King Street."
No one knows where it came from.
L.H.'s wife, Janet White, has tried to track down the site's history, but
with no luck. The folks at Historic Halifax didn't know. The family that lived in
the house back in the 1920s couldn't tell her anything either, she says.
There was a home on the site, but it burned down in the 1920s. Then it was a
horse and mule stable, but that has been gone for as long as townspeople
recall.
"As far as I can tell you it's been vacant since I moved here," says onlooker
Milton Bradley, 70. He came to Halifax in 1936.
White's plans for the engine are simple.
"I'm going to build me a platform, paint it and sell it for $10,000," White
says.
Donating it to a museum is also an option. But first things first. He's not
sure how to get the half ton of iron out of the hole.
"Somebody wanted to crank it up and drive it out, but I don't think that's
going to work," he says.
Halifax doesn't have to worry about entertainment though.
"The crowd's kind of dying down, so next week I'll plant a lawnmower,"
White says.
(
geocities.com/rjmohl)